A Bald Man's Take on Inbound 17

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Excitement and anticipation had been building for weeks. It was finally time to hop a fast plane north and descend on the city of Boston for the biggest online marketing conference in the country...INBOUND.

This 4-day conference, while informative, eats into client time. Our team worked double-time so that the agency didn’t skip a beat. As they say, the show must go on.

If you are not sure what the INBOUND Conference is, let me try and paint the picture for you. Imagine 20,000 digital marketers, developers, writers and business owners flooding into the enormous Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, all trying not to bump into each other. Well, maybe some of them were. ;)

It might be the biggest gathering of nerds in the world!

Huh, I guess that makes me one of them. Crap.

Each day was highlighted by a featured Keynote Speaker. Here were a couple of them, maybe you’ve heard of a few: Michelle Obama, Brene Brown, Ed Catmull (President and Co-founder of Pixar), HubSpot Co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah and wrestler John Cena.

The entire event is hosted by HubSpot, a software company that offers a website CMS, digital marketing platform, sales CRM and other fun marketing toys. Attendees from all over the world come to Boston to absorb the latest and most effective marketing strategies from some of the best in the business. It really is a fantastic learning experience! There’s conversion rate remedies, landing page love, pillars of content, inspiration joy joy, non-sleazy sales solutions and legendary leadership leaders!

Sorry, just nerded out there for a second.

While the conference is a great opportunity to improve one’s marketing craft, it’s also a chance to create culture building experiences with fellow co-workers. All work and no play makes this pirate a stressed out ball of burnt up gray matter.

Team Impulse dove into the seafood paradise of Legal Seafoods for a group dinner on the first night. It was an amazing spread of appetizers, crab cakes, chowder (chowda = Boston speak), oysters, wine, scallops, shrimp and lobster. Oh, and I think there was a little rum mixed in there for a night cap as well.

It was an amazing dinner and I’d like to thank Remington and Rachel Begg for treating us. They have created a great place to work.

Other team building activities included a trip to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game, a late night tour of Chinatown to find the best dumplings and a stroll through Boston Common to enjoy a drink at Norm’s favorite place – Cheers.

It was great getting to know my teammates better and I believe it’s going to make the agency an even more finely-tuned digital marketing machine. When you get everyone on the boat rowing in the same direction, powerful results are the by-product.

I’m ready to put what I learned at INBOUND 17 into practice. For a more specific look at what new strategies we soaked in, you’ll have to wait till my next post. Or become a client and I’ll put them to work for you!